At E3 last year, seeing was believing. The Nintendo 3DS made good on the promise of three-dimensional gaming without the glasses. I was impressed that the Japanese company could actually do it. The feat has the power to fundamentally change… Continue Reading →

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At E3 last year, seeing was believing. The Nintendo 3DS made good on the promise of three-dimensional gaming without the glasses. I was impressed that the Japanese company could actually do it. The feat has the power to fundamentally change the handheld market.
Now, the only problem is the system needed games. It’s not enough to have the hardware. What developers do with it is just as important. With that in mind, I had a chance to check out the system again along with a few games last week.
The Nintendo representatives and I went over the basics of the portable. The 3D screen has a toggle to adjust the depth based on your eye preference. There’s the circle pad, which offers analog controls, and a telescoping stylus that extends and shrinks like an old radio antenna. We went over motion and gyro sensors all of which lets the system track movement in all six axes. (This becomes important later.)
The system does have facial recognition, and it’s used in games such as nintendogs + cats. There's also a slot for 2GB SD card (included), a charging cradle and a built in pedometer that builds up coins, which are then used in games as currency. Think of it as one of Nintendo’s incentives to get players to move about. One of the tidbits I learned is that the Street Pass, which is the new tag mode, will support up to 12 games in the background. That means players don’t need to have a specific game running in the system for an exchange to work. Gamers with 3DS systems in their pocket or backpack can just stroll by and the two handhelds will briefly connect, do whatever function is necessary and disconnect. It will definitely improve the chances of getting tags in games like Super Street Fighter 4. I only wish it were backward compatible so that I could finally get some people in my Dragon Quest IX inn.
One of programs that can definitely be running out of the box will be the Mii Street Plaza. That’s where players can use the Street Pass mode and fill their plaza with Miis made on other 3DS systems. In addition, you’ll be able to import Miis from the Wii. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to move your 3DS Miis to the Wii. That’s likely because there are different Mii options available on the 3DS than the console. One of the more interesting features is that players can take a 3D picture of themselves and translate them into Miis. I checked it out and it’s fairly accurate for a virtual character. You can even fine tune it with facial hair or glasses to boot.
When it comes to music, the 3DS will support MP3 files, which is the standard format here in the States. In addition, the system will be able to multitask. Now if you get stuck in a Zelda dungeon or want tips on Pokemon, you can pause the game, open the Opera web browser and look for any answers you need. Or you could pause a game, call up the note pad and write in some notes to help you remember for later on. The multitasking is going to be very helpful.
Lastly, it was good to see that Nintendo finally created a friends list that was hardware specific. Cleaning up the friend code issue is going to be important for the 3DS. Now all players have to do is share a code once, and they’ll be able to see what their friends are doing on their 3DS much in the same way they do on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.
Now that I had a better sense of what the 3DS can do, I was ready to dive into some games. The first and most impressive one I tried out came with the system. They’re part of those six Augmented Reality cards. You place them on a flat surface like a table, point the 3DS at and let the magic happen. The system interprets the symbols on these cards into built-in games. (Coincidentally the 3DS can read QR labels, too.)
The card with the question mark blocks transforms into a minigame. It starts off simply enough with a virtual box on the table. Players can move around it, see the back, front, left and right. In real life, it’s not really there but through the system, the 3DS renders it as if it were. The one caveat is that the 3DS has to be within an arms length of the card for all this to work. (The system with the camera can tell you the distance from the card.) That isn’t too much of a problem and what’s even better is that the AR game works in low light.
You start off shooting the box with the right shoulder button. The second level has players shooting more boxes. Eventually, the game will create a virtual hole in the table and players will have to move the system, peer into it and shoot a hidden box in there. Events go totally off the wall when the card itself transforms into a boss. A dragon pops out of the table and players will have to shoot its face and neck while dodging fire. It reminds me of this HP video, except it’s real, it’s fun and it works. I only had a chance to play one AR game but I did inquire about possibilities for expansion packs beyond the ones alredy built-in. I can imagine third-party developers making their own minigames based on the concept of the card.
What’s interesting is that AR technology has been around for a few years with the iPhone, but it’s not until Nintendo tried it out that there’s been a big breakthrough with game design. Most of the time, augmented reality games just overlay graphics off the camera's feed and use the real world as game field. Players never really interacted with the way in the Nintendo 3DS does.
It’s astounding to see in action and highly interactive using the motion-sensing. I’m sure the other convential 3D games are going to be good, but it’s the AR titles that seem to be the killer app. It definitely has the potential to change how we interact with video games. Playing one with friends may turn them into gamers or at least sell a few more 3DS systems. It’s something that’s fresh and new and totally in Nintendo’s wheelhouse.]]>http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2011/02/23/nintendo-3ds-hands-on-and-my-favorite-game-on-the-system-so-far/feed/18Nintendo 3DSNintendo 3DS